Public Libraries and the Ideology of the Market Economy

Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay. In the modern state there are very few sites where this is possible. The only others that come readily to my mind require belief in an omnipotent creator as a condition for membership. It would seem the most obvious thing in the world to say that the reason why the market is not an efficient solution to libraries is because the market has no use for a library. But it seems we need, right now, to keep re-stating the obvious. There aren’t many institutions left that fit so precisely Keynes’ definition of things that no one else but the state is willing to take on. Nor can the experience of library life be recreated online. It’s not just a matter of free books. A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal.

Archives

One Booklover’s Journey

Your blogmeister's chronicle of his own current, past, and anticipated adventures in reading is displayed in the sidebar of another blog he writes.

If you'd like an admittedly idiosyncratic source of book recommendations, you are invited to press the FOLLOW button at this other blog.

And of course readers' comments about posts to the Atlanta Booklover's Blog are always welcome, especially alerts about further fodder for the Booklover's Blog, or for recommending additional titles your blogmeister might want to add to his burgeoning "Books Cal Wants to Read" list, which he maintains at that other blog.